Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  ***

  Ajax looked up and saw the swarm of natives headed his way all freaked out as if someone had thwacked their hive but good. “Think, Ajax. This is going to be over in a second one way or the other.”

  He counted out three heartbeats and then did it. Blew himself to kingdom come. Made a crater just big enough for all of his adversaries to fall into all at once, then covered them up with the dirt he’d ejected from the hole. Then reagglutinated himself. “I know what you’re thinking. Sucks to be buried alive. Sucks worse if you manage to come back from the dead only to crawl your way out and everyone thinks of you as a zombie thereafter. But the good news is, I left just enough of my nano in that hole that you won’t be alive long. Of course, you won’t be entirely dead either. The little kids playing in this area, hearing your wails, will assume the ghosts of their fathers are haunting the place. They may erect a shrine to you and turn you into holy people.” Anguished wailing was already seeping up through the ground. “No, no,” he gestured, holding out his hand placatingly. “Hold the thanks. You’ll devalue the charitable act with all your praise.”

  He ran off, mumbling his own little mantra to settle his nerves, albeit a bit breathily. “What’s the difference between a hooker and a drug dealer? A hooker can wash her crack and resell it.” More labored breathing. “What do the Mafia and pussies have in common? One slip of the tongue and you’re in deep shit.” He panted harder as he splashed through the river, convinced there had to be more of the bird men on his trail who could play god way better than he could, being as they’d been at it a lot longer. “Just think, Ajax, some people, all they can do to relax, is rock back and forth. Pathetic bastards.”

  ***

  Cronos had the unfortunate luck of walking headlong into a giant of a native. The guy just towered over him and grunted. Probably all he ever had to do to put the fear of God into someone. Cronos responded by pulling the giant’s heart out with one fist to the chest and a simple twisted wrist of a retraction. He commenced with eating the heart right in front of the guy. That kind of pissed him off. He put his arm through the hole in his chest, stared at his hand sticking through his back. Made some pained sounds that were a mix of frustration and shock. Then he stopped fingering himself and directed his rage at Cronos.

  He beat on Cronos mercilessly. But by then, Cronos had turned to rubber, no more responsive than a gym bag. He saw no need to rush his breakfast so finished eating the giant’s heart while the guy did his worst. The big man just grew more frustrated at the impotence of his superhuman strength. Definitely a new sensation for him.

  Finally, Cronos was finished with the heart. He sucked his fingers dry of the juice. Then climbed the mountain of a man and pulled off his head. Twisted off, to be more precise. He spit in the guy’s neck before the giant had a chance to fall over to make sure his nano, responding to his directives, overpowered the Ubuku native’s nano, so he wouldn’t be getting up. Once their jobs were done, his nano would self-dissolve, again, per Cronos’s instructions. But he didn’t bother to spit in the mouth of the severed head. Figured he could jabber away to keep Cronos company. Even without a voice box, these nano-infested heads seemed to do just fine procuring vocal magic. Cronos secured the head to his waist by tying some of the bird man’s long hair through one of his belt straps. “Don’t know why they bother to shrink heads. If you ask me, you look a hell of a lot more intimidating this way.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  DeWitt kneeled down to check out the footprints. There were still too many of them. “I thought we vanquished most of you guys already.”

  The drumming was starting again. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  He hiked in the direction of the hypnotic rhythms, peeling back the branches from his face like the clingy arms of teenage fans at a rock concert. Bromeliads kept falling from above like coconuts, causing him to wonder if the aerial bombardment was all that coincidental. Then again, the vibrations from the drums might have been all that was rattling the trees. One good wallop to the head from one of those treetop-growing pineapples and he’d be counting stars, not natives.

  It wasn’t long before he came upon another horde of natives worshipping the triple threat of the father, the son, and the daughter. These followers too were sacrificing people to their religious leaders. Just the nature of their ritual differed a bit. These bound, writhing men and women alike captured from the other tribes were dropped in a pit of giant green anacondas only too happy to swallow them whole, if slowly and painfully and to no end of wretched screaming. The rest of the ritual was pretty much the same. Bird men bowing and chanting to their leaders. Prattling on with some mantra or another. “Must have just caught the morning services earlier,” DeWitt mumbled. “Unless I miss my guess, they plan to overcome their nano-disadvantage with sheer numbers. Figuring one or another of them has got to get through. Not a bad plan, actually.” He snuck away in the direction he had come. “Leon is going to want to hear about this. Maybe it’s time someone asked if there is any limit to what our nano can do.”

  One of the bird men, late to the services, crossed his path. He was dragging a bound sacrificial victim, perhaps as a peace offering for daring to arrive at mass five minutes late. Upon recognizing a hostile, he threw the woman to the side, took the torch he was carrying and lit himself afire. Gestured for DeWitt to come closer.

  “In case you haven’t been keeping up with current events, pal, we’re not so impressed with your burning man magic anymore.” DeWitt sighed when the guy seemed no less clueless for all his cueing. “Fine. Let’s see how you like burning alive without the nano backup.” DeWitt hurtled a loogie at him. Crossed his arms and smiled. Nothing happened. That wiped the smile off of DeWitt’s face faster than the native charging him. The tribesman kept doing his slow motion off-kilter Frankenstein walk DeWitt’s way, determined to get him in a big bear hug, and thereby reduce him to ash in the process. Why was he moving so slowly? Defective nano? With shorter shelf life? Running low on nano-batteries?

  DeWitt groaned. “Tell you what, why don’t we go with the dissolve into a nano dust cloud thing and devour you with a million tiny mouths?” DeWitt flexed and roared and visualized what he wanted, but nothing. “Don’t tell me the little bastards are on strike. Maybe if you remembered to eat or drink something once in a while, DeWitt.”

  He picked a low-hanging piece of fruit dangling from one of the neighboring trees. Wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but bit into it anyway. Held out his hand in an “I shall vanquish the to oblivion” gesture, with about as much success as the last few times he did that. “Okay, pal, I hate to end things this way, but I fear I must.” He bowed to the woman. “For what it’s worth,” he said to her, “I can think of worse ways to die than being swallowed whole by a giant snake.”

  Tired ducking the flaming native’s clumsy swings which were still too close for anything short of a sunburn, DeWitt turned and ran like hell. “You had to say, I wonder if these nanites have any limits. You had to go and jinx it. You couldn’t just leave it alone.”

  ***

  DeWitt came running into base camp screaming, “You’re not…” but he was panting too hard to get out the rest. As he bent over to support his upper body on his knees by way of his hands, he gazed around at the group seated about their settlement on the tree stumps. Looking all glum and deflated. It was as solemn a group as you’d find on any spiritual pilgrimage. “How come our church services don’t look anything like theirs?” he panted out. “I mean they’re singing and dancing and throwing people into a giant pit of anacondas to be swallowed whole. Now that’s how to do church with style.”

  “You were about to say, DeWitt?” Leon said taking a step closer. His steaming coffee mug in hand. Did anyone not tell this guy it’s like a hundred degrees in the shade? And he might switch to sipping something a bit frostier?

  “The nanites, they stopped working.” DeWitt glanced about the group. “But I’m guessing you figured that part out for yourselves.”
<
br />   “They’re self-dissolving nano,” Natty explained. “I needed you to make a point. Now you’ve made it. No point beating a dead horse.”

  “What about the point of being a demi-god?” DeWitt said. “I rather liked that point. The other points just seem to pale by comparison.”

  “It’s my guess that Truman did the same thing with his natives,” Leon replied. “The only way to keep them loyal to him. Like any good druggist, you gotta keep ’em coming back for more.”

  “And what if he’s still handing out meds?” DeWitt said. He seemed to be the only one with enough energy and enthusiasm to carry on this debate and stuff all kinds of vocal inflection into his words to boot.

  “I don’t think so,” Natty said. “By now, he’ll have collected up the bodies for analysis. He’s gotten what he wanted out of me. A way to shut down even the nano men, just in case the other side in any of his off-book wars decides to make some of their own. He’ll be on to another campaign now. He’ll pull another toy out of the toy chest for us to play with.”

  “You hear that, guys?” Leon said, cutting a wedge out of a somewhat underripe mango with his bowie knife and slipping it into his mouth. “You can cheer up.”

  “You’re letting this guy call our plays now?” DeWitt protested. “Since when did he become a master war strategist?”

  “Since he started talking sense,” Leon said. “The nano is just a weapon like any other, guys. Don’t get too attached. It doesn’t define us. It can’t define us. It’s not the tool that makes the man, it’s...”

  “Ya-da, ya-da, ya-da!” DeWitt protested. “I’m not done playing demi-god yet, I tell you! Give me my toy back! Now!”

  Leon smiled. “Tell him how many ways you can neutralize your own nano, Natty. Go ahead, tell them all.”

  “A hundred different ways, just off the top of my head. Assuming the other guy isn’t a tenth as creative, and can just come up with ten ways to shut you down. If it’s not one of the ways I thought to neutralize, you’re screwed. Dead, dead, dead. And if I’m guessing right, it’ll be the most painful death you can imagine. Nothing like a billion little enemies gone all turncoat on you from the inside.”

  A few grunts from the chorus section sprawled on the stumps. Leon, as always, was standing and moving. “Now he tells us,” one of the seated soldiers mumbled.

  DeWitt finally collapsed on an unoccupied tree stump. It was his guess this was exactly how the others came to be seated here in this manner.

  “Go shake it off,” Leon said to the gang. “Take a shower under a waterfall, jump in the river, roll in the mud, whatever it takes.”

  The group disbanded, taking their sulky demeanors with them.

  Leon made his way over to Natty. “Where’s all this headed?” Natty just averted his eyes. “These war games, we’re having, in the middle of actual nowhere as opposed to proverbial nowhere, there’s more to them than just making sure our guys have the best tech relative to the other guys, isn’t there?”

  “I can’t tell you that right now, but yeah, there’s more to it.”

  Leon and Laney, who was standing by Natty’s side, exchanged wary looks. “I thought we’d developed a certain trust by now, Natty.”

  “Yeah, we have,” Natty said. “It’s not you I’m concerned about. The forest has ears. And I can’t have the truth getting back to Truman. But you’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out. Just promise me you’ll keep it to yourself when you do.” Natty walked off to lie down on his hammock, currently sans overhanging mosquito netting, facing the sky he couldn’t see, and tossed a coconut, peeled down to the small seed inside, like a softball overhead, to help him think.

  Leon took his bowie knife out of its upper-arm sheath, etched three words into the outside of a mango peel, two, if you considered the first word was hyphenated. Walked the message over to Natty and held it out in front of his face about six inches. Natty read the message and glared back at him. “Swallow that.”

  Leon swallowed the note. Turned. Smiled. And hiked back to Laney.

  “I thought you were going to kill him the way you marched over there,” Laney said.

  “Kill him? I came out here half-hoping to woo you. Now I’m thinking I should have been wooing him. Come between us and I might just have to twist your head off, pick you up by your feet and drink your insides like a tasty margarita.”

  Leon hiked away from her toward where he’d stowed his gear, leaving Laney more than a bit hang-jawed.

  Crumley returned with giant vine-woven mesh bags slung over his shoulders. He was carrying what Laney estimated to be the volume of two boulders. He emptied them out on his handmade log dining table. Set about cutting the pods open. “What are you up to?” she said.

  He pointed to his thermos. She unscrewed the cap, poured some of the liquid inside. Gulped it. “Oh my God! What is this?!”

  “Chocolatl. A gift of the Aztecs. Made from these cacao bean pods, vanilla beans and honey.”

  “You’re making more of the stuff?” she said, working her way through the rest of his thermos.

  He nodded. “Don’t know why we come to paradise to make war. Life is so good here, the natives are willing to sacrifice their own to the gods just to keep it going. If that isn’t a clue to stop and smell the wasp-shaped orchids I don’t know what is.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir. I can’t get over the fifteen-foot-tall orchids.”

  “I made a bed of their three-foot-long flower petals for you.”

  She reached over and kissed him on the cheek. “You definitely know the way to my lips.”

  “Yeah, I think I have a ragged copy of How to Manipulate Women somewhere around here.”

  The thermos emptied by her last swallow, she relieved his shin harness of the cutlass and set to work beside him splitting cacao pods. “Just how drunk on this stuff can you get?”

  “By morning we’ll be convinced the nano war is the kind of surreal shit that could only exist in a Kurt Vonnegut novel.”

  ***

  Laney met up with Leon as he was getting ready to hike back to ALPHA UNIT. They were deployed some distance away, just at the edge of the quadrant designated for their war games. He figured he could use the hike to clear his head. He realized what he really needed was to get away from the sour attitude still infesting their camp after his taking OMEGA FORCE’S newest toy away from them.

  She was balancing her made-on-site drink in her hand, determined not to spill a drop, evidently saving it just long enough to get out what she had to say to him. After that, she’d be all too happy to kiss oblivion in the face with the aid of its contents would be his guess. “Natty’s never been able to complete anything he started. Chasing after another idea before he’s even finished tweaking the one he’s working on. So where’s he getting all the help from?”

  “Truman, of course.” He shoved another item into his pack.

  “Yeah, and assuming Truman can leverage the scientists in his employ like nobody’s business to keep them in his employ, then what? There just aren’t enough of us to go around. It’s like a bloody auction out there for the best minds in the field. Hell, even second, third, fourth best, down to the runts of the litter, pretty much have their choice of what country and what company to work for. It’s a scientific age with a dearth of scientists.”

  “I don’t know; there are a couple billion Chinese happy to do anything to claw their way out of poverty. That’s got to help fill the gap.”

  “Just look into it is all I’m saying. There’s more here than meets the eye, and more than Truman can explain away by interjecting himself into the picture.”

  “Why, what does it matter?” He stuffed another item into his pack, just forcefully enough to convey his impatience. Maybe his own mood had soured with the latest turn of events more than he cared to admit.

  “You’re the military strategy guy. Don’t you want to know who we’re really up against and what their real agenda is?”

  He sighed. “Yeah, I do.”<
br />
  “So, you promise to look into it?” She sounded surprised this argument had taken a turn so early, but not entirely convinced they’d rounded the bend yet.

  Leon smiled. “You know, we have our own DARPA division, we call them ALPHA UNIT. Engineers right at home with some of the wildest ideas known to man, cross-trained as soldiers. Sometimes the cutting edge is needed on the battlefield even more than it’s needed back home. We frequently have to invent things on the fly when we’re deployed. Thank God for the age of 3D printers, which came a little earlier for us than most. Another secret just between us.” He stuffed the last item he meant to pack with him, and zipped the pack shut. “I’ll run your concern past Patent and his people.”

  She departed his company to enjoy her drink. He took one last look at his backpack and figured, screw it. Left it right where it was. Figured he’d make do with his bowie knife, same as always.

  ***

  Leon and Patent met up with one another along the perimeter of the circle the ALPHA UNIT boys had drawn to show off for one another with what they could do using the latest nanotech, now that Natty had made it accessible to them. Each cadet was taking a turn in the center of the circle.

  The one in the middle of the ring currently splayed his arms and legs and, by leaning forward, “fell into the wind tunnel.” Only, there was no updraft. He magically floated upwards anyway, as if he were parachuting out of a plane in reverse, or indeed, had been blown upwards inside an air tunnel. “I just visualized my nano hollowing me out,” Fly Boy explained, “so I became like an aerogel, lighter than air.”

  The audience clapped and whistled. A chorus of “Whoot! Whoot!” also thundered across the sky until it caught up with fly boy.

  “The nano handles matter to energy conversions and back again with equal finesse,” Fly Boy explained. “The only question is, what to do with all that free energy that’s liberated from matter?”